


Red Night

by orphan_account



Category: Samurai Flamenco
Genre: Angst, M/M, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:11:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite popular belief, Aoshima was very good at keeping secrets. One-sided Hazama/Goto and other minor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Night

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes angst just happens. Can be read as a continuation of my fic ‘Vice’…but also works on its own.
> 
> Contains some non-graphic sexuality. Spoilers for episode 13.

 

\---

A psychologist would probably be disturbed (or morbidly fascinated) by how often he wanted to punch Hazama Masayoshi.

Sometimes Hazama was simply part of a bigger problem and his quiet disposition coupled with the bright red of his uniform made him an easy target for Aoshima’s rage, like brick wall that he could scream at or bloody his knuckles against. Of course, more often than not, Hazama _was_ the problem.

Sometimes he wanted to land a glancing blow on the side of Hazama’s face, the trajectory dragging his knuckles along the curve of Hazama’s cheek and catching skin, drawing blood. Red was now _Hazama_ ’s colour after all.

\---

He was absently pushing around a plate of subpar curry when the restaurant door jingled open and in strode Hazama, off duty of course, with a surly, dark-haired man close behind him. Judging by the way Hazama pushed him around, the two clearly knew each other and they took up a booth in the corner with the perfected ease of routine, Hazama splitting the menus while the other flagged down the lone waiter.

Aoshima was relieved that Hazama hadn’t noticed him. The _last_ thing he needed was Hazama sliding into the seat across from him and dragging him into some rehearsed conversation about Red Axe (especially when Hazama’s trivia was hopelessly outdated and not nearly as rare or fascinating as he claimed it was) or work or, worst of all, the value of teamwork and the “very, very important” role Flamen Blue played in it. Even if they were in the middle of a restaurant, Aoshima would rather break Hazama’s nose than listen to one second of his condescending bullshit. There was even the possibility that Hazama would just stand there and _let_ him do it.

 He glared at the back of Hazama’s head until his eyes hurt and started to cross. Hazama had a skinny little neck that Kaname could probably wrap his hand around. Briefly, he entertained the thought of Red Axe pummeling Flamen Red into the ground, preferably with Red’s helmet cracked and terror visible in his wide eyes. Of course, Aoshima would gladly fill the suit afterwards, regardless of how tattered it was.

Across the room, Hazama was laughing at something the dark-haired man said.

As the waiter approached his table, Aoshima was hit by a bolt of inspiration and decided to get really, really drunk. The idea of passing the night with a numb head was so enticing that he only felt a tiny flicker of irritation when the waiter asked if he had any ID. Given the sluggish trickle of customers into the large space, the staff probably wouldn’t throw him out for sulking at their table for an hour or two. The waiter’s expression was one of genuine disinterest as he nodded along to Aoshima’s order.

His curry was cold enough that its consistency had changed and he idly churned it with a fork. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d bothered to come to this particular restaurant for a second time, but maybe it was the place’s complete lack of pretention that appealed to him; the food on his plate admitted to being the boring, forgettable commodity that it was and didn’t aspire to be anything more or less.

Across the room, the dark-haired man emptied his second beer bottle of the night. Evidentially, being around Hazama was so taxing that it drove people to alcoholism.

Aoshima felt a strange kinship with the man as he buried his head in his hands while Hazama waved his arms around and exclaimed something like, “ _But Goto, I’m not lying! It really did have four arms!”_

The same kinship mercilessly shattered when the man reached out and ruffled Hazama’s off-blond hair, affection clear in his eyes.

Reaching for his wallet, Aoshima flagged down the waiter and paid his bill.

He left the restaurant in an orderly fashion, focusing intently on putting one foot in front of the other and _not_ stumbling into a table or one of the scattered chairs. Once his feet hit pavement, his legs buckled and he leaned into the closed door, wincing at the sudden rush of nausea. He tried to run, to force his legs to move as they should, but he’d drank too much for that. He’d always been a lightweight, no matter how hard he tried to deny it, and yet the image burned into his eyelids of the stranger reaching for Hazama signaled that maybe he hadn’t drank _enough_.

Little covered stalls lined the street, their waiting empty glasses catching the light. Harsh laughter filled the air, coworkers sharing their usual stories with unusual gusto. He felt pale, grey, against the burst of colour around him.

He mumbled an apology as he brushed shoulders with a young couple. They were so entangled that he couldn’t tell whose shoulder had impacted his. An echo of intrinsic human warmth spread through his sweatshirt and for the first time in a long time he wished that there was a familiar body near his, that _someone_ who would know how to clear his head, coax life back into his shell. Only a masochist would be so eager to dig up the past, to start pulling nails and ripping up floorboards in search of the thing that had been rightfully, purposefully buried away.

His apartment was just as empty and grey as he had left it, the accents of white and red dulled by shadow. He watched a passing train through the blinds. Slanted orange light fell into the room, framing countless silhouettes of Red Axe.

Red and white, the colours of Kaname and Red Axe. Now they were shared with Flamen Red, with _Hazama_. The orange light drilled through his eyes and into his skull. He couldn’t remember the stranger’s face, but he remembered the _look_ he had when he touched Hazama. Hazama had inspired such affection, evoked that maddening, elusive _look_.

Aoshima stared into the light until his eyes watered.

\---

After a successful day of patrolling the city and dealing with stiff-necked bureaucrats, the Flamengers assembled at Hazama’s apartment for an impromptu Soccer Rangers marathon, which Aoshima had begrudgingly agreed to after Midorikawa pointed out that active members of the Flamengers should have broad knowledge of tokusatsu and not limit themselves to any one subgenre. The only part of Midorikawa’s little lecture that had any impact was the “active members of the Flamengers” part, which seemed to imply that members _without_ broad knowledge of tokusatsu could easily become _in_ active.

Immediately after entering the apartment, he made a beeline for the couch and settled into his usual spot on the far right. Despite the withering glare he leveled at her, Momoi sat tightly next to him. Her blissful expression indicated that she was miles and miles away, probably daydreaming about Kaname.  When Hazama flicked on the projector with a sharp click, she jerked awake, blinking rapidly.

“You’re too close,” she said bluntly.

“ _You’re_ the one who sat here,” he grumbled. Kuroki was plainly laughing at them and Aoshima tried to ignore him.

“I don’t remember that.” She continued, grimacing. "Soichi, you should know by now that you’re not my type.”

Before he could kindly tell Momoi to fuck off, Hazama leaned over and shushed them. “The episode’s about to start,” he whispered, pointing at the projector like Aoshima was some kind of idiot who couldn’t locate the _giant_ screen plastered over the far wall and covered with the eye-searing green of the Soccer Rangers’ Field Headquarters (which, for _some_ reason, was covered in Astroturf).

Before he could kindly tell Hazama to fuck off, Kuroki loudly cleared his throat in a way that meant he had stun gun in his pocket and was seconds away from pulling the trigger. Earlier that day, Aoshima saw him in the lab adjusting the output levels until they were high enough to fry an elephant (which seemed to defeat the purpose of a _stun_ gun but apparently Kuroki was the ‘Weapons Expert’ and that gave him a license to do whatever the hell he wanted).

And before he could even think of what to say to Kuroki, Kuroki had already gotten up to dig through the fridge.

“What’s with all of the beer?” Kuroki asked, pulling out a translucent bottle and wrinkling his nose at the label. “This stuff is _cheap_.”

Hazama smiled.

“It’s not mine,” he said.

Kuroki put the bottle back and settled for water instead. By the time he sat down, the Soccer Rangers were in the middle of an elaborate speech about teamwork, each member saying half of a line before letting another jump in and finish the other half.

“We should try that,” Hazama said wistfully, his eyes glazed. If he hadn’t been Flamen Red, maybe Yellow instead, Aoshima wouldn’t have laughed at him.

“Seriously? They’ve been doing this for, what, ten minutes? Do you know how long that’d take to rehearse?”

Hazama pouted. “Well, we wouldn’t have to rehearse. We’d just have to… You know…”

“What?”

“It would have to be spontaneous,” Hazama said, his eyebrows knitted together. “It would only work if it was spontaneous.”

“The mental link’s auto-synchronization aligns our speech patterns during fusion,” Midorikawa observed, “so, to some extent, the framework of what you’re purposing is already in place. All we would need is the right stimuli to make such a speech occur.”

“But hasn’t it already occurred to some extent?” Momoi interjected. “I mean, there have been times during a fight when I’ve started saying something and then someone else has finished it for me.”

Pushing up his glasses (and ignoring the battle onscreen), Midorikawa replied, “Hazama’s inquiring as to if a _group_ speech can spontaneously occur. Isolated incidents have occurred over the past weeks, but I cannot recall a moment where we were all perfectly aligned.” As if he anticipated the obvious question, he continued, “Of course we coordinate when shouting attack names, but that’s a very simple thought to unify. What Hazama’s purposing is much more complicated.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Aoshima muttered. “There’s nothing _cool_ about finishing each other’s sentences all the time… Isn’t that a thing couples are supposed to do?”

Predictably, his criticism of Hazama’s scheme sent the group into an hour-long debate on whether or not the idea was cool (the final verdict being 2 in favor and 3 against). The Soccer Rangers episodes weren’t necessarily _bad_ , but they couldn’t contend with a very flustered Hazama as he tried to rally support for his failing cause, pulling on his near-encyclopedic knowledge of tokusatsu for examples and hurriedly reacting them. His impression of Kaname sent Aoshima and Momoi into hysterics and even the ever-stoic Midorikawa joined in, letting out a surprised laugh when Hazama backflipped over the couch and into Kuroki.

Even though it was quickly approaching midnight, they each seemed reluctant to leave. Being slavishly devoted to his daily schedule, Midorikawa was the first. Kuroki soon followed, rubbing the kinks out of his bent neck as he stepped into his shoes.

Momoi hovered nervously behind the couch, her bottom lip clenched between her teeth. She was obviously waiting for Aoshima to leave, but, after a lot of awkward staring, she sighed and reluctantly accepted his presence.

“Hey, Masayoshi?”

Hazama started at the sound of his first name, glancing up from the dishes he was sorting. “Yes? What is it?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

Aoshima inhaled the chip he was eating and spent the next few minutes coughing up pieces of it. His ribs hurt and he probably sounded more like a hyena than a human being, but Momoi’s extremely blunt question coupled with the mental image of Hazama blushing and stuttering through a first date was simply too much.

Surprisingly, Hazama didn’t even twitch. Faced with Momoi’s intense scrutiny and Aoshima’s accompanying laughter, he managed to look _bored_.

“Not that I know of,” he said and resumed his cleaning, neatly stacking the dirty glasses before carrying them to the sink.

Momoi unveiled her second plan of attack.

“What about a boyfriend? Do you have one of those?”

Hazama’s hand didn’t slip as he placed the glasses in the sink, his movements precise and even, unaffected. “Not that I know of,” he repeated with the same fixed expression.

Momoi’s eyes narrowed.

“But what about the beer bottles? Who do _those_ belong to if not a girlfriend or a boyfriend? I know that you don’t have-” She froze abruptly, cutting out ‘relatives’ or ‘parents’ or maybe even ‘ _friends_ ’.

“They belong to a friend of mine,” he replied, giving her a small, forced smile. “We watch Harakiri Sunshine together and he tends to leave things behind…”

“Oh.” She shifted awkwardly. “T-That sounds nice…”

Hazama smiled and said nothing.

Momoi began to gather her things. She left quietly.

Aoshima remained where he was, watching Hazama as he moved around the kitchen.

There was nothing inherently suspicious about Hazama’s actions, but Aoshima knew him as an artless, hopeless fool. Whatever layers Hazama had were transparent, some even translucent, and every insecurity and fault of his plainly showed through. Pressuring Hazama was like dosing him in water, forcing the paper-thin layers of his shell to drift and waste away, exposing the slender, frail individual beneath.

But before him now, Hazama stood tall and composed. He had finished loading the dishwasher and was clearing away any garbage, pausing to check every package to see if it was recyclable before throwing it away. He hummed the first half of the Soccer Rangers theme song over and over again.

Since he wasn’t babbling about Harakiri Sunshine or trying to drag Aoshima over to his figure collection, Hazama must have uncharacteristically forgotten about his guest. He crossed the room in a daze, straightening things as he went.

While Hazama did have a nice apartment full of nice furniture, his couch wasn’t _that_ comfortable. The back was too stiff and set at too rigid an angle. The armrests were at an awkward height. And yet, for some reason, Aoshima couldn’t get up. He was _comfortable_ , but why? How?

Looking at his right hand gave him a damn good explanation. He had accidentally been drinking the cheap beer from the fridge.

The _polite_ thing to do would be to immediately apologize and beg for forgiveness, but, considering the tiny sliver of liquid remaining, there was no way to undo his mistake.

He ran a hand through his hair, pushing his bangs back, and took one last drink. It was _cheap_ , like Kuroki had said, but he wasn’t going to complain.

Through half-lidded eyes, he saw Hazama staring at him.

A strange, singular focus touched Hazama’s face, darkening his gaze and dragging it down. Slowly Hazama inclined his head, throwing shadows against the hollows and edges of his throat, and, for the first time, Aoshima realized that the man before him could be very, _very_ attractive, especially when he looked mere seconds away from abandoning all self-control and embracing whatever passion it was that turned his grey eyes molten.

Aoshima lowered the empty bottle and placed it on the coffee table. The sound, soft as it was, was all it took to snap Hazama out of his trace. His mouth opened, as if he had some speech planned that would perfectly explain _what_ exactly had just happened, but there was no speech to explain what exactly had just happened because, clearly, Hazama couldn’t even approach the subject without suffering from a complete breakdown.

He backed away from Aoshima and into the dvd cabinet, his hands shaking.

From Aoshima’s perspective, it was a damn good thing that Hazama had started to freak out, mostly because it saved him the trouble of turning the kid down. The only problem was that now Hazama was beet red and hyperventilating in the corner.

“Look, just calm down,” he snapped.

When that didn’t work, he tried to remember Momoi’s advice for dealing with panicked people. Snapping at Hazama was _probably_ not the best way to start, but he couldn’t remember anything Momoi had said past the obvious, which was not to point weapons at panicked people or threaten them with bodily harm.

Across the room, Hazama was not calming down. He made a move to escape into his bedroom but Aoshima reacted quickly by leaping over the coffee table and cornering him, which, judging by the way Hazama froze, didn’t have the intended calming effect.

Aoshima decided to switch tactics.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said.

Hazama’s hands were tightly balled by his sides. He spoke quietly, flatly. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Soichi. I…really don’t.”

It took all of Aoshima’s self-control to not roll his eyes. “Well, for one thing, I’m not going to tell anyone that you were checking me out, if that’s what you’re so worried about.”

Hazama had the audacity to look insulted. “I wasn’t checking you out,” he muttered.

“Look, kid, I wasn’t born yesterday…”

Hazama frowned at his use of ‘kid’. “I’m not lying. With the low lighting, you sort of looked like someone else and I-”

All of the blood drained from Hazama’s face and he slapped a shaking hand over his mouth.

Aoshima wanted to reassure him in some way, but he couldn’t. The realization hit like one of Kaname’s kicks, taking the air from his lungs and leaving him momentarily weightless, overwhelmed by the force behind the blow while his body and mind fractured in countless places.

Fate had a cruel sense of humor.

“I …think I saw you at a restaurant with him,” he found himself saying in a hollow voice. “He has dark hair like me, doesn’t he? He’s older than you. He was the one who left the stuff in your fridge…”

Mutely, Hazama nodded.

“And he doesn’t know that you…?”

He shook his head. “No. And he has a girlfriend.” He met Aoshima’s wandering gaze and held it. He spoke calmly, evenly, like a man resigned to a hard fate (although Hazama was a stupid, ignorant kid if he thought that _this_ was a hard fate). “He can’t know about this. No one can.”

“Of course,” Aoshima muttered, running a hand through his hair. If he stayed any longer, Hazama would start asking obvious questions, namely _“Why are you being so nice to me?”_

The air was thick with a nameless tension as he staggered over to his shoes, his back to Hazama. His sympathy was an artifice. It hid a darker truth, one that he couldn’t unmask now.

He heard Hazama sharply breathe in, an unanswerable question building. Desperate, Aoshima blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at the usual time. D-Don’t forget that there’s scheduled maintenance on Flamen Robo for the morning, so…” He couldn’t think, could hardly breathe. He needed to _leave_. “S-So don’t forget that. I’ll…see you then.”

“Soichi, wait!”

He slammed the door behind him and held the handle. Hazama tried it once, but Aoishima was stronger. He waited thirty seconds before releasing it.

He took the stairs, starting off hesitant and then breaking into a mad dash. Hazama was probably too busy wallowing in self-pity or punching walls to follow him now, but he wanted to feel the night air, to get _away_ before he snapped.

Once the shock wore off, Aoshima was surprised at how hard he laughed. Hysteria had been building in his throat and pressing against his ribs. Fate had a cruel sense of humor and yet he had the sudden urge to laugh along with it.

No matter how tortured Hazama was by his attraction and no matter how _desperately_ he wanted it to be realized or blissfully, mercifully _stop_ , his suffering would remain but a shadow of what Aoshima had endured. In a contest of misery, the victor was clear.

His lips curled into an ill-fitting smirk, one that looked back at him from bright store windows and the windshields of parked cars. He indulged in a masochistic sort of pride. It was a salve for his wounds.

Hazama’s friend was only a few years older, clearly less than ten, and had a girlfriend. _Kaname_ was over forty and had been happily married for a long, long time.

                                                                                                      ---

He moved a cutout of Red Axe in front of his window, adjusted the blinds, and laid down on his futon. The shadow that fell over him was humanesque, a bit too large in the shoulders perhaps but tangible nonetheless. The shadow’s head aligned with one of his ceiling posters of Kaname. The expression that looked down was fixed, expectant, and _wouldn’t_ change. No matter what weakness he revealed, this Kaname wouldn’t move or change or shift his expression to one of disgust.

Once, he had tried to touch Kaname.

The unwanted memory surfaced in the low light and he bore its weight.

It had taken months before Kaname visibly forgot and lapsed back into his old ways, throwing an arm around Aoshima’s shoulder with ease and ruffling his hair. He had immediately forgiven Aoshima, he was _too good_ not to, but suspicion had left his eyes changed, the gaze difficult to match, impossible to hold.

Years had gone by and yet Aoshima sometimes flinched when Kaname looked at him, memory warping expression, turning it hostile.

The poster was a moment in time. Nothing could reach it.

Red Axe’s shadow fell over his hips and cloaked his wayward hand. He had done this too many times to feel shame about the act.

\---


End file.
